Underwater Photography - SENSACIONES.org

Close-ups with
flash
Macro shooting is usually handled very well in fully automatic
mode. The large, well shaded LCD screen makes it easy to
accurately select an interesting composition. Olympus C220.
5mm lens. 1/100 th @ f13. Automatic (GS).
day off! Finally, we decided
to limit our use of Photoshop
in preparing the pictures you
see here to auto-levels, minor
backscatter removal and
sharpening after resizing.
The evaluation
Both of us are used to
cameras that offer much more
flexibility and control, so we
were sure that our
photography with the C220
was going to be limited by its
40
technology. Its lens covers a
standard mid-range, ideal on
land, but neither wide enough
for scenery nor tight enough
for macro underwater. And its
flash, coming from within the
housing, is ideally placed for
lighting up backscatter and
not powerful enough to
illuminate large subjects. The
other major limitation of
many digital compacts is
shutter delay - a seemingly
endless period of time that
starts when you press the
shutter, and waits until the
The night-time flash mode was used here to lengthen the
exposure time and balance the ambient light with the flash-fill
on the Scorpionfish. Olympus C220. 5mm lens. 1/25 th @ f8.
Automatic (AM).
fish has swum away before
actually taking a picture.
Clearly this was going to
cause problems with moving
subjects. That said, we felt
the best evaluation was to try
to take all the different sorts
of images that we would have
done using our more usual
mounts; the sorts of images
that any owner of this sort of
camera would want to take.
Below is a list of the 5 types
of shots we decided to try,
starting with the easiest,
technically speaking, and
finishing with what we
considered nigh-on
impossible:
1) Close-up, flash-lit
image of a slow moving
subject
2) a fish image
illuminated with a balance of
flash and ambient light
3) a wide angle scene
4) a moving animal
behavioural image
5) a split level shot
Sitting on the benches
outside the Dive-Tech shop at
Turtle Reef, before our first
dive, we decided to start by
playing to the camera’s
strengths and shoot close-ups
lit with the camera’s flash.
Small camera to subject
distances would reduce
backscatter and allow the
internal flash to illuminate the
subject, and the single light
source (the flash) would be
easily controlled by the
camera’s metering. We started
using the classic approach of
shooting from as close to the
subject as possible (with the
close-up function turned on)
often with the lens zoomed
out to get the subject in the
frame. This worked well.
Sometimes, at such close
distances the flash would
overexpose the subject,
despite its auto control. The
exposure can be compensated
through the menus, but this is
a bit fiddly to do for each new
subject and we mostly used
two other approaches. The
first was to increase the flash